Natasha Lomas

Natasha is a reporter for TechCrunch, joining September 2012, based out of London. She arrives after a stint reviewing smartphones for CNET UK and, prior to that, more than five years covering business technology for silicon.com (now folded into TechRepublic.com). At silicon she focused on mobile and wireless, telecoms and networking, and IT skills issues, and has also freelanced for organisations including the Guardian and the BBC. Natasha studied English at Cambridge University, and also holds an MA from Goldsmiths College, University of London.

Latest from Natasha Lomas

Finnish smartphone startup Jolla has revealed the next step in its hardware journey: it’s making a tablet, albeit The Jolla Tablet will be crowdfunded. So this is mostly a pitch for pre-orders right now, with the price-tag starting at $189 for the first 2,000 pledgers. Read More

A tech industry-backed, U.K. government-funded initiative offering free online courses to those wanting to learn commercial digital business skills goes live today, aiming to upskill Brits to work for tech companies or even start their own startup. Read More

Danish startup AllUnite, which uses the lure of free Wi-Fi to drive local adverts to people logging on within retail locations such as shopping centers, has closed a €3 million Series A funding round. Read More

What’s the short term trajectory for fitness wearables? Down. Analyst Gartner is projecting a dip in overall shipments next year, owing to overlapping functionality between different types of fitness wearables and because smartwatches are eating into their functionality (while also offering more in the way of communications features). Read More

From wearables to moveables, the rise of the sensornet rolls on: a Bluetooth-connected suitcase which keeps tabs on where in the world you’ve traveled and tracks its own location using GPS so you’ll never have to leave the lost luggage department with a crestfallen face has passed $1 million raised on the Indiegogo crowdfunding website. Read More

Don’t doubt the commitment of MIT graduate and Dynepic co-founder Krissa Watry. She used to work for the U.S. Airforce as a chief engineer designing and building aerospace hardware and helping launch satellites. But working on kit destined for space was a just stepping stone on the road to her real dream of becoming an entrepreneur. Read More

The U.K. government’s latest crack down on terrorism is once again focusing on the digital sphere, with Prime Minister David Cameron announcing that major Internet companies have agreed to do more to tackle terrorist and extremist material online — by “introducing stricter filters, increased industry standards and better reporting mechanisms”. Read More

Predictive keyboard maker SwiftKey, which is backed by investors including Index and Accel, has finally launched a Chinese beta of its software on the Android platform. This follows the launch of SwiftKey for Japanese beta back in May.
This time last year the U.K. startup — which was founded back in 2008 — told TechCrunch the two Asian languages were the big outstanding… Read More

The Pew Research Center has published a new study into Americans’ attitudes to privacy in the digital age. One stat that really stands out is how overwhelmingly U.S. consumers believe they have lost control over their personal data, owing to a perception that online companies are doing what they like with harvested personal info. Read More

Amazon is expanding its R&D operations in Cambridge, U.K., with a plan to staff out a large research lab — expanding on the foothold it acquired when it bought Cambridge-based speech tech startup Evi Technologies two years ago, TechCrunch has learned. Read More

Technology, automation and robotics destroys jobs by replacing human work with machines, and demanding workforces change up their skills to remain employable. This we know. But a new study by professional services firm Deloitte has quantified the rate of destruction for the U.K. jobs market over the next 20 years — predicting that around one-third (35 per cent) of existing jobs across… Read More

Gartner is predicting a 30 per cent jump in the number of connected objects in use in the wild from this year to next as sensing connected devices proliferate in an Internet of Things (IoT). In a forecast put out today, the analyst predicts there will be 4.9 billion connected things in use in 2015, up from 3.8 billion this year. Read More

Strict new price caps will come into force in the U.K.’s payday loans market in January, sector regulator the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has confirmed, affecting any U.K. businesses that offer this type of short-term consumer credit. Read More

The sensor-stuffed Thingsee One is designed to democratize the Internet of Things by allowing users to easily configure a particular function within a companion mobile app, so without needing to be a software programmer or hardware tinkerer to do so. Read More